HfSTORIC PRIORITIES i:^r LYJNTN 



AN AlJliKi ^s^> < . i 



SOCIETY HOUSE 



L\^NN HISTORICAIi SOCIETY 



ocTomurt ;>, ioj3 



C J. H. WooontJRY, A. M.. Sc. D.. Prbsidenx 




Reprintf.l iidin tlu- KiL'ister ot the Socioty, Voi\mic X\'II 



1013 



HISTORIC PRIORITIES IN LYNN 



AN ADDRESS fcJIVKN AT THE DEDICATION 



SOCIETY HOUSE 



LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 



OCTOnBJR n, 1J>13 



C. J. H. WoonnuRY, A. M., Sc. D., President 




Reprinted from the Register of the Society, Volume XVII 



LYNN, mXHH. 



7^- 



Gin 

C»rn«;:l«' lost* 

^ 1914 



HISTORIC PRIORITIES IN LYNN 
An Address Given at the Dedication 

OF THE 

Society House 
LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 

C. J. H. WOODBURY. A. M.. Sc. D.. President 

OCTOBER 9, 1913 



When the five pioneers with their families set out from 
Salem and landed at Deer Cove between Red Rock and 
the bastion of the Boulevard about June, 1629, they found 
" a faire playne " for their homes. 

Montowampate (Sagamore James), whose wigwam 
was on Sagamore Hill, tradition says near the crossing of 
Newhall and Sagamore Streets, hospitably granted them 
the privilege of occupying the land comprised in the greater 
Lynn, and he ever lived in peace with the white men, 
the only known point of difference (a serious one) being 
his refusal of the catechism. 

It is true that the selectmen of Lynn later obtained a 
deed of this same territory from four Indians, which was 
acknowledged May3i,i687,andputon the recordwhich had 
been established in 1645 ; but this purchase was not made to 
obtain possession of the land, for they already had that, 
but to show Governor Andros, and through him to the 
Crown, that they had a title by direct purchase from the 
Aborigines, irrespective of that of the King's territory 
granted by Royal Charter. 

This address was given in abstract at the dedicatory exercises. 



LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 



THEIR WOMEN SUFFRAGE. 



The suffragettes and suffragists of to-day may find a 
comforting precedent in that when the colonists came here 
they found this part of the country, including Essex, Suf- 
folk, and portions of Middlesex County, ruled by Tahat- 
tavvan, the squaw Sachem, who succeeded to her first hus- 
band's authority, which she did not abdicate to her second 
husband, the medicine-man of the tribe, who had expected 
to wed the sachemate as well as the squaw. 

Is it possible that this feminine potentate so impressed 
the Puritans that they conferred upon women in the colon}' 
of Massachusetts Bay additional civic rights beyond what 
they held in England, from the first until their modification 
in 1789 by the adoption of the federal constitution? 

GROWTH OF THE SETTLEMENT. 

The Lynn 'Colonists builded better than they knew, 
for what prophetic phrensy or flight of imagination, cer- 
tainly not logical judgment, could have foretold that this 
settlement would develop into a municipality whose popula- 
tion numbers one-tenth of one per cent, of that of the United 
States ; a town whose assessed valuation amounts to about 
one thousand dollars for each man, woman, and child, and 
the skill of whose artisans has made it the third city of the 
Commonwealth in the gross value of its manufactured 
products, out-stripping in this respect six other towns of 
greater populations. 

The material Lynn is indeed a topic worthy of any 
assemblage, but on this occasion your consideration is asked 
for the more important historic Lynn and the many initi- 
ative acts by its people in establishing precedents which 
have been fundamental in their far-reaching influences upon 
many lives beyond the boundaries of the town. 



LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 5 

The Lynn Historical Society has for its jurisdiction 
the greater Lynn with its five adjacent towns which were 
portions of the original tract, and its membership approach- 
ing 750, includes many of its loyal sons and daughters 
spread from the Pacific coast even to foreign lands, making 
it the largest secular organization in the city. 

A PICTURESQUE CITY. 

Lynn is one of the most picturesque cities in this 
country, beautiful in that infinite variety of mountain, vale, 
and plain, which passes description, its forests gemmed 
with lakes and rivulets, its farms and gardens, its littoral 
of headlands and beaches. 

It is the only incorporated city along the Atlantic 
coast, outside of seashore resorts, whose peopled zone fronts 
directly upon the ocean. 

The range of hills on the west, hardly suited for advan- 
tageous cultivation, retains its forests ; and the great tract 
set apart as the Lynn Woods, of which the original instru- 
ment was recorded December 6, 1881, is undoubtedly the 
first instance in this country where the movement for forest 
conservation resulted in the legal ownership of land for 
the purpose. 

This great work was initiated by the versatile Lynn 
naturalist, Cyrus Mason Tracy, and made legally possible 
by the first president of this Society, Philip Augustus 
Chase, to whom the Commonwealth is also indebted for 
the establishment of forest reservations throughout its 
territory. 

Nahant, jutting a league into the ocean, with its fertile 
gardens set in nature's framework of ledge and beach, 
environs with foaming billows one of the majestic pictures 
along the New England coast. 



6 LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 

Its alternation of forest with fertile spaces, especially 
valued by the Puritans for its pasturage in common, was 
followed by the sterilization of its soil, resulting from the 
felling- of its forests, until the land became as worthless to 
its owners as it was to the Indian whom tradition relates 
sold it for a jewsharp, and it was abandoned to squatter 
fishermen for years enough to confer titles through undis- 
puted occupancy, and finally the restoration of the fertility 
of the soil through tree planting. This story of Nahant 
was the only instance of the cycle of sterilizing rich lands 
by removal of the forest growth and the subsequent renewal 
of the fertility of the soil by tree planting which was sub- 
mitted at the congressional hearings on the subject, and 
undoubtedly had a profound influence in securing federal 
legislation on forest conservation, the greatest economic 
problem before this extravagant American people. 

The Lynn Boulevard, a unique highway along the 
Atlantic Coast, affords an unobstructed view of the ocean's 
ever changing moods of calm and storm throughout the 
year, and furnishes a shrine for the worship of nature in 
temples not made with hands, by the adoring millions of 
towns-people and visitors. 

It is with especial pride that we can assert that this 
vista of the ocean was forever assured to the public through 
the efforts of the first Secretary and Founder of the Society, 
Mr. Howard Mudge Newhall. On meeting him, only a 
few days before his last sickness, I mentioned the obligations 
which the people of Lynn bore to him for numerous acts of 
public spirit, and he modestly disclaimed being anything but 
a sharer in those events, because he was always associated 
with others who gave ample and efficient cooperation ; ex- 
cepting that in the suggestion for the Boulevard, laying 
out the route and the tentative arrangements with owners 



LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 7 

of real estate, he asserted that he was entirely alone, until 
the project had been developed in detail and had received 
a general public endorsement. 

It is to be hoped in the near future that it may be 
feasible that this Society, as one of its functions of erecting 
memorial tablets, shall be able to make arrangements for 
the erection of a memorial tablet at some point of vantage 
along the route of this celebrated highway. 

It may be worth while to note that the revetment wall 
of concrete which resists the furious impact of the ocean 
gales served in its design as the precedent for a similar wall 
at the extreme of the coast boundary of this country in 
defending the city of Galveston, Texas, against a rep- 
etition of history. 

LYNN HARBOR. 

Lynn Harbor is one of the latest chapters in physical 
geograph}' and undoubtedly dates from a storm which tore 
away a point of land extending oft' the site of the present 
state bath house and built the beach to Nahant, between 
the years 1614 and January, 1629. 

During the earlier year, Captain John Smith not 
merely visited these shores, but mapped Nahant, which 
he describes in his book as the " lies of Mattahunts were 
like the Pieramides of Egypt, a league in the sea from the 
maine," and he relates his fight with the Indians and their 
retreat by canoes, a method of flight which the savages 
certainly would not have taken if a beach aftorded a more 
speedy escape from the arquebuses of the Englishmen. 
Furthermore he gives additional evidence of their isolation, 
through his proposition to fortify them and to lay the 
Indians under tribute. 

The deed of the Georges grant, which included 



8 LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 

Nahant, January 20, 1629, to Sir William Brereton 
included "Cape Nahaunte," but specified the islands to the 
south. 

The origin of Long Beach is evidently similar to the 
sand bar which has been built by storms above low water 
mark from Little Nahant to Egg Rock at least three times. 
In June, 1907, when two houses were moved from the 
northerly end of Long Beach to Winthrop on lighters, 
the small tug grounded at this place where deep water 
was expected, and the outside route was taken on the 
second trip. 

The frequent breaking of the ocean over Nahant Beach 
gave rise to serious apprehensions, and the various attempts 
to provide a remedy were failures, until about i860, when 
a supply of tufts of shore grass, which thrives in sand, was 
shipped from Barcelona, Spain, in a United States Naval 
vessel and brought to Lynn, packed in barrels, and planted 
above high water mark. 

This grass thrived and spread, and caught the sand 
drifted by the wand, and in this manner the beach has 
been raised. This Lynn precedent has since been applied 
to the preservation of sandy tracts in many places. 

From lack of tidal scour since the formation of the 
Beach, Lynn Harbor has been filling with the detritus 
washed from the shores, except as deepened by dredging, 
and the day is past when a ship could dock in the upper 
harbor as was the case of the three prizes taken during the 
War of 181 2. 

SOME HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS. 

The lack of a deep harbor or falling w'ater courses 
prevented Lynn from having either maritime commerce or 
the early types of manufacturing wdth their resultant 



LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY g 

instances of opulence, caused the people of early Lynn to 
rely on their personal resources, and has evidently been the 
cause of the many instances of marked individualism. 

Mere antiquity is not history : The wolf-pits of 1630 in 
the Lynn Woods are undoubtedly the oldest unchanged 
works of man in the Colony ; they are curiosities but not 
historical. Mere recitals of gone-by isolated ocurrences 
are annals and not history, and it is better for mankind that 
most of them are forgotten, otherwise the world would be 
overburdened with chaff. 

The actions of former days in such logical relations 
that their gleanings become cumulative and furnish illumi- 
nating precedents to helpfully guide later generations is 
history. The strongest living forces are the thoughts of 
those whose lives are of the past. 

It is not that we love our ancestors better than our 
neighbors, but we must recognize that out of the thousands 
of preceding lives there were a few who made helpful sug- 
gestions for the present time. 

It is worth while to cite a few instances of the creation 
of precedents by our townspeople which appear to have 
been of such potency as to modify the lives and actions of 
others. 

THE FIRST ACTS OF INDEPENDENCE. 

The inability of the English Government, impover- 
ished by wars, to give the people of Massachusetts Bay in 
the early days of the Colony that assistance which "the 
pioneers felt that they had reason to expect, caused the 
colonists to inscribe upon their flag the Macedonian cry, 
"Come over and help us!" and also developed through 
their conditions of privation intrinsic self-reliance, and this 
conscious strength aroused a spirit of liberty and independ- 



lO LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 

ence, which gave rise to serious apprehensions in the 
mother country, where these sentiments became as well 
known as on this side of the Atlantic. John Evelyn, one 
of the Commissioners of Trade and Plantations, wrote in his 
diary May 26, 1671 : "There was a fear of their break- 
ing away from all dependence on this nation" (England), 
and later, on August 3, 167 1, "the Council voted to send a 
Deputy to this colony on an ostensible mission, but secretly 
to learn whether they were of such power as to resist His 
Majesty and declare for themselves as independent of the 
Crowne." 

The first overt act of independence was not by resolu- 
tion or rebellion, but by the issuance of coinage without the 
essential reference to the King b}^ Grace of God. 

The dies for the Pine Tree coinage were made at the 
Saugus Iron Works from designs furnished by Esther 
Jenkes, the wife of the superintendent. 

That she was a woman of taste is certainly not evi- 
denced by the coins, but by the fact that she was presented 
(prosecuted) for wearing silver lace, which was beyond 
the legal bounds of her husband's estate, in which respect 
the Colony adopted the English law, and therefore her 
extravagance, instead of being the subject of domestic 
altercation, became that of a public prosecution. It is said 
that some of these coins found their way to Charles II at 
the hands of some enemy of the Colony, and the King 
showed them to Sir William Temple with, "They tell me 
that the New England colonies are minting money. What 
do you say to these?" And Sir William, who was a friend 
of the Colony said, "That is the oak which sheltered Your 
Majesty at Boscobel." "Oh, the honest dogs!" and the 
expected proceedings for this act of high treason were 
never taken. 



LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY II 

This minting began in Boston in 1652 and continued 
until 1706, but the canny colonists undoubtedly realized 
that they were committing one of the most serious trans- 
gressions possible under the English law, and for obvious 
reasons never changed the date from that of 1652 on the 
original dies which were made at Saugus. 

The practical independence of the Colonies which had 
been developed by geographical isolation and ill-advised 
acts of the mother country gave rise to a wish for independ- 
ence of authority on the part of an aggressive minority 
throughout the Colonies, and this minority ruled, as minor- 
ities always do rule, in the face of a meek majority who 
remained loyal to the Crown. 

This agitation for separation was intense and wide- 
spread, as is instanced by the plea for independence by 
Major Samuel Appleton of Ipswich given at Celemount 
Rock, Saugus Center in 1687, ^^^^ the effect of his unre- 
ported eloquence was so permanent that the story was 
passed from father to son and held in remembrance, and 
is now commemorated by a bronze tablet on this nature's 
rostrum. 

All along the fringe of sea coast which comprised the 
Colonies this agitation flourished, but the earliest instance 
of recorded legislative action advocating independence, of 
which I have been able to learn, occurred at Lynn, where 
a town meeting passed resolutions on December 16, 1773, 
vigorously asserting their "Right to Freedom." 

The traditional Declaration of Independence at Mech- 
lenburg. North Carolina, was made May 31, 1775, and the 
great declaradon at Philadelphia, July 4, 1776. 

President John Adams stated that the movement for 
American independence started when the Puritans set sail 
for New England. 



12 LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 



LYNN MEN AT ARMS. 



Lynn is without battlefield shrines, for she had no 
deep harbor to defend, nor any river at a time when the 
sea power was even more essential as a world power than 
in later years. Her hills command no strategic passes, 
and armies have never had cause to meet upon her plains. 

Her only fort was the two blockhouses built in the 
middle of the town in 1642 as a defense against the 
Indians. This fortification is not near Central Square, but 
about four miles distant on Vinegar Hill, near the Saugus 
line, whose site is now owned by this Society. 

A declaration of Lynn's part in the affairs of the day 
from the earliest settlement is a record of brave deeds 
intelligently wrought, whose full annals would require a 
paraphrase of New England history, for if the fortunes of 
war never brought any arbitrament of arms upon its terri- 
tory, her brave sons engaged in thirteen wars, with the 
possible exception of the short war with France in 1800, 
which was limited to sea engagements, and not including 
the various Indian wars in distant parts of the country, nor 
the Barbary war in the Mediterranean, which were with- 
out declaration and not given to the conditions prevailing 
among civilized nations. 

It is not known that any Lynn men were engaged in 
the twenty-year civil war between Connecticut and Pennsyl- 
vania known as the Pennamite- Yankee War which ended 
in 1788; but on account of the extensive early migrations 
from Lynn to Connecticut, it is probable that descendents 
of Lynn men were enlisted in that peculiar struggle. 

These various wars may be worth recounting, as some 
of them are not included in general histories, showing the 
possibilities of Lvnn's share in historic material to be saved 
from oblivion. The Pequot War, 1636; King Philip's 



LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 13 

War, 1675 ; King William's War, 1689 ; Queen Anne's 
War, 1702; King George's War, 1744; French and 
Indian War, 1754; Civil War between Connecticut and 
Pennsylvania, 1768; Revolution, 1775; Shay's Rebellion, 
1786; War w^ith France, 1800; Mexican War, 1846; 
Civil War, 1861 ; Spanish War, 1898. 

Ex-President George H. Martin has given this Society 
the benefit of his thorough investigations into the early 
Indian wars, but Lynn's part in the French and Indian 
wars is yet to be written, and the same omission exists in 
regard to the War of 181 2 and even the Mexican War. 

Lynn people were not rich enough to furnish any 
Tories at the time of the Revolution. 

Howard K. Saunderson, by years of intelligent 
research upon Lynn's part in the struggle for independence, 
found that out of a population of 465 polls in 1774, Lynn 
furnished 483 soldiers in the war of the Revolution and 
this city has 196 known graves, which is said to be the 
greatest number of Revolutionary graves in any city of 
the United States ; and it is but consistent with this patriotic 
record that Old Essex Chapter of the Sons of the Ameri- 
can Revolution should be the largest organization of this 
body of patriotic sons of valiant sires. 

The records of the Church at Lynnfield contain the 
information that the first death in the War of the Rev- 
olution was that of Joseph Newhall of Lynn on March 9, 
1775, resulting from a cold caught at the North Bridge 
skirmish, Salem, on the twenty-sixth of the previous 
February. 

The old First Church was far from quiescent in those 
days, and only one item from the parish records will be 
cited from the many showing the preparedness of the peo- 
ple. The innocent vote passed at the parish meeting held 



14 LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 

in the Old Tunnel. June 30, 1775. authorizing the sale of 
the ^^'indo^vs "for what thev \^-ould fetch." contained a 
deeper meaning, as these ^^"i^do^vs were glazed with lead 
vrhJch would be useful for bullets in the forthcoming con- 
flict. A quantity" of powder was stored for emergency 
under the pulpit of the Old Tunnel in 1744. and a funher 
suppjY was added in 1774. Whether this last powder was 
a pan of the lot obtained in the nrst and bloodless contest 
of the Revolution in the looting of Fort William and Mary 
a: Portsmouth. December 14. 1774. under the direction of 
Paul Revere, when a hundred kegs were taken, is only a 
subject of conjecture, but there was no other known avail- 
able large supplv at the time. 

Such movements were necessarilv wrapt in secrecv as 
far as possible and the avoidance of direct record limits 
the establishment of facts to circumstantial occurrences, 
but I believe that this powder from Portsmouth was dis- 
tributed in various places, and that the powder at Shirley, 
whose seizure was the purpose of the futile sortie which 
resulted in the r.vo battles of Lexington and the repulse at 
Concord, was like that at Lvnn. a portion of the Ports- 
mouth loot. The storage at Lynn was a well kept secret, 
for if Lord Percy had any suspicions he could have brought 
his men under cover of night bv water and obtained the 
powder with but linle difficult^-, and Lvnn would thus have 
changed the face of histor}-, but not its ultimate results. 

It is well established that some of this powder was used 
at the battle of Bunker Hill in accordance with the purpose 
of Paul Revere in directing its capture at Portsmouth to 
pro'ride for the inevitable conflict. 

The Embargo caused such intense sufferincj" in Mas- 
sachusetts that the feeling against the fc:'.-r:- .'. jivernment 
became so bitter that secession was widelv advocated, but 



LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY I5 

when the the War of 1812 was declared, the people lovally 
supported the nation. 

This war 1 '.ed Lynn nearer tr rr in 

its history- whe:. . _ attle between the S._:_::. _;--l the 
Chesapeake was fought off Xahant June i, 1S13. and 
Colonel John Nichols, an eye witness, related to me that 
the vessels in their manoeuvres wc: ^ roach as near to 
Eastern Point as the distance to E__ . -.. which is about 
three-quarters of a mile. 

It shc„" ' " ":-e forgotten that the fricrate Constiiution 
and other :_..„. . essels were built by Edmund Hartt of 
Lynn at his shipvard in Boston, on the present site of 
Constitution \\'harf. This celebrated vessel was desigrned 
by Joshua Humphreys of Philadelphia, and not by Ham. 
as has been claimed by some writers of Lynn histon.*. 

As this paper relates to initial acts by Lynn citizens, 
the most striking Lvnn deed of this nature during the War 
of 1S12 appears to have been that of the Quaker guns, 
whose season-cracked threats ser\-ed efficiently in intimi- 
dating hea\-ier armaments. These were devised at the 
Charlestown Na\-A- Yard by Captain Joseph Floyd, the 
Lvnn pumD builder, who showed that it was no: a far cry 
from a towr. v. v : . menacing broadside armament. 

The Civil War is so near that it is a remembrance 
and will not have the judicial perspective of history while 
veterans ''shoulder the crutch and tell how nelds were 
won :" ing this struggle. L\-nn maintained her 

patriotic rcpuiation and furnished 3.270 men. or 230 more 
than its full quota, of whom 2S9 are known to have been 
lost. 

Their Grand Army of the Republic. Post 5. at one rime 
had a membership of 1.030. being the largest in the 
countrv . 



l6 LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 

It is sincerely hoped that in the near future the 
Society will be able to have a memorial list of the names of 
all Lynn men who had fallen in defence of their country 
in the various wars, placed upon the wall in the entrance 
hall of this building. 

INDUSTRY AXD INVENTION". 

The varied conditions of necessity were a stimulus 
to the fertility of mental resources and the development of 
mechanical skill which appears to have been unusually 
active in the early settlement, and for the succeeding gen- 
erations, and it is worthwhile to consider a few, at least, of 
the occurrences which were precedents in their nature. 

Francis Ingalls,'one of the pioneer settlers, built a tan- 
nery which was the lirst in the Colonv. but was not the 
first in New England as has been claimed by several local 
writers, as there were several tanneries in the Plymouth 
Colony at earlier dates : and it was situated on the site of 
the car stables on Humphrey Street, near to the Swamp- 
scott line where its vats remained until thev were taken 
up in 1825. 

Edmund Ingalls, his brother, and fellow-pioneer, 
built a brewery at about the same time to the west of Gold 
Fish Pond, but the colonists in Salem had either been 
more progressive, or more thirsty, for they had anticipated 
the one in Lynn. 

The Saugus Iron Works is worthy of a history in 
itself as the pioneer establishment of its kind in the country, 
beginning to make iron from the deposits of bog iron near 
to the present site of Prankers Mills, in 1642, and after- 
wards making wrought iron and steel and casting brass 
and iron, as well as having the first machine shop. The 
house which was erected for the men is still occupied, 



LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 1 7 

although there is at this time a hazard of its beino- torn 
down to make way for other changes. Lynn's only shrine 
is the kettle which was the precursor of the great iron 
industry and is now in the Public Library, well-kno\\Ti as 
ha\-ing been given to Thomas Hudson for about twenty 
acres of land for the iron works between the present sites 
of the Scott and the Pranker's Woolen Mills, in which the 
consideration was to be the first article cast in the iron 
works . 

The Puritans in common with all nations of that day 
were believers in slavery- and lived up to their belief. 
Their attempts with the Indians were unsuccessful, as the 
red men would not stay put. Their use of negro slaves 
lasted for about one hundred and fifty vears ; and their 
white slaves, termed redemptioners, consisting of Scotch 
and Irish prisoners of war, whom Cromwell captured and 
sent to this country, were used in large numbers at the Iron 
Works where a number of them lived in what was known 
as the Scotch house, which was burned a few vears aso. 
There has been virtually nothing published relative to this 
peculiar form of slavery and there is not vers- much in the 
records about them, save in that of court proceedings 
where the natural belligerency between these tvvo races 
required judicial adjustment. 

The first superintendent for the L'ndertakers of the 
Iron Works was Joseph Jenkes, a remarkable inventor, 
and the progenitor of a line eminent to this day in manu- 
facturing, invention, and mechanical science. He was the 
inventor of the American scythe which doubled the length 
of the blade, reinforced by a longitudinal rib, which took 
the place of the short, broad, bush-whack scythe : and also 
of a water wheel for which he was the recipient of the first 
patent granted on this continent, May lO, 1646. The 



l8 LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 

original copy was found a few years ago by his descend- 
ant, William J. Jenks of New York, and the Society has 
a photographic copy hanging in this hall, accompanied by 
what is almost a necessity, the transcription of the archaic 
script into modern type. 

The Town of Boston authorized the building of a fire- 
engine at the Saugus Iron Works in 1654 ; but a careful 
search has failed to reveal any more of the story beyond 
the Boston town records ; such a fire engine if built was 
another example of priority. Lynn did not have any fire 
engine until 1796, but the fire wards with buckets and bags 
continued until the memory of some now living. 

Governor Winthrop directed the colonists to develop 
their water powers for grist mills and John Elderkin of 
Lynn was the first millwright to whom the construction of 
these grist mills was entrusted, and it is claimed that he 
built twenty-eight of them before 1650, none of which are 
now standing, because on the introduction of the power 
carding and spinning machinery, a second story was built 
of wood and all of them were burned. 

John Elderkin went to New London in 1650 to build a 
mill for John Winthrop, Jr., the Governor of Connecticut, 
in New London, where it is still in operation. The mill 
and the surrounding land are preserved as a part of the 
park system of that city. 

The abundant legislation by the very paternal General 
Court reveals the existence of the medieval guilds at the 
first, but always by indirect reference, such as entrusting 
the execution of such acts to the master workmen. Twenty 
years later, when these guild ofiicers had grown past active 
labor and the organizations were not maintained to provide 
for the succession, the enforcement of similar laws was 
assitrned to the selectmen or to other civil officers. 



LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY I9 

Shoes were not articles of commerce, and all of the 
early settlers were obliged to rely upon themselves or some 
of their neighbors for their shoes, and men would alternate 
that craft in the winter with their farming in the spring and 
fishing during the summer. 

The oft repeated story of John Adam Dagyr, the 
Welsh shoemaker, a master workman who improved the 
quality of the goods by obtaining some French shoes, dis- 
secting them and after learning how to make them, instruct- 
ing his shop companions, and when they had mastered 
the art and mystery of this cordwaining, he sent them 
forth to work in other shops and pass the art along, and 
in this manner he established virtually a trade school which 
was undoubtedly the cause of the establishment of the high 
grade shoemaking in this cit3^ 

But the enterprise in producing a supply of shoes as 
an article of commerce beyond a local consumption was 
established by Ebcnezer Breed who not only found mar- 
kets for American shoes which were packed in barrels and 
sent as far as Philadelphia ; but it was to his efforts at the 
age of twenty-three that the protecting clause was inserted in 
the first tariff law, passed July 4, 1789, following the 
preamble : 

" Whereas it is necessary for the support of government, 
for the discharge of the debts of the United States, and 
the encouragement and protection of manufactures, that 
duties be laid on goods, wares and merchandise imported." 
Lower down is specified : 
"On boots, per pair, fifty cents. 
"On all shoes, slippers or goloshoes made of leather, per 

pair, seven cents. 
" On all shoes or slippers made of silk or stuff, per pair, 
ten cents." 



20 LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 

There are those who believe tliat the tariff Laws of the 
United States began more wisel}' than they have ended. 

The cordwainer is of the past and has been supphmted 
by the shoe manufacturer, but the so-called shoe manu- 
facture as conducted for many years was not worthy of the 
term, being merely the concurrent work of many persons 
for one "shoe boss," and it was impossible for the manu- 
facture in its modern sense to be established until certain 
essentials of operative machinery were developed. This 
began with the introduction of the sewing machine for the 
uppers, soon followed by the sole sewing machine which 
with other machines was invented in Lynn by Lyman R. 
Blake, and as the proverbially essential awl of the cord- 
wainer was displaced, the shoe manufacture was begun. 

Seth Dexter Tripp with marked fertility of inventive 
resource followed these by a number of machines which 
continue as essentials in the long series of complex 
machines necessary to the thirty or more processes attended 
by as many persons in the manufacture of a shoe. 

The lasting machine of Jan Ernest Metzeliger of 
South American birth furnished such an important element 
in the establishment of the shoe manufacturing industry, 
that he enriched the country of his adoption. 

The variety of styles and sizes of shoes produced by 
any one factory has prevented the development of 
machinery to that automatic stage reached in many of the 
metal working processes, and shoe machinery requires 
the services of skilled artisans. 

The result of this sub-division has been the develop- 
ment of a more highly expert handicraft than would be 
possible for the average man to apply to the whole making 
of the shoe, but as a matter of economics, the dexterit\' 
obtained by practice upon detail is such that the value 



LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 21 

of the output is so augmented that the wages in the shoe 
manufacturing industry are on a far higher basis than 
would ever be possible in shoe making. 

It is said that sub-divided labor in manufacturing was 
originated in the old mill on Commercial Street, which 
was the first steam mill in this country, by Jeptha Porter 
Woodbury who substituted specialized operatives on wood 
working machinery in place of journeymen carpenters 
hitherto employed in the production of building supplies. 

In its broader and more material aspect, two Lynn 
men have established precedents in business administration 
which have wrought great changes in the methods of life 
to both personal and commercial relations. 

The one, John Elbridge Hudson, the solidarity of whose 
work in developing the telephone system into a national 
unit has been such that the property created has been 
unquestioned and continues as a basis for a permanent 
conservative type of investments. He made an analysis 
of the common law which is now used in all the standard 
digests of law in the country. The clearness of this 
analysis and the simplicity of the classifications founded 
upon it have been of the highest value. 

The other instance is that of Charles Albert Coffin, 
the shoe manufacturer, who temporarily took charge of the 
Thomson-Houston electric works until somebody else could 
be found, which great unknown has not as yet been dis- 
covered ; whose work in many original methods can be 
summed up in the single statement that of all the establish- 
ments devoted to manufacturing electric light and power 
apparatus, these works at Lynn remained for years as the 
solitary instance of the profitable use of capital invested in 
this line of manufacture, and it may not be too much to 
intimate that some of the remunerative subsequent occur- 



22 LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 

rences at least, may have been examples of enterprise as 
copyists. 

It would hardly be expected that this lack of condi- 
tions requiring great works would develop anything out of 
the ordinary in engineering construction, but the floating 
bridge on the turnpike is a unique structure differing from 
the prehistoric pontoon bridges which are sustained upon 
floating foundations of boats, but in this bridge the structure 
is not merely floating, but made flexible to conform to the 
varying heights of the water. 

It is claimed that the laying out of the highway from 
Lynn to Marblehead, authorized at a town meeting, July 
5, 1659, although it was then declared that the highway 
had existed for thirty years, is the first record of the laying 
out of a public highway on this side of the Atlantic, and 
that this action was the precursor of the authority given to 
town surveyors of highways as the most potent despot 
under American law. 

Colonel John Emery Gowen was one of the most 
eminent civil engineers that this country has ever produced 
along the lines of his specialty of sub-marine engineering, 
and the boldness and originality of his operations furnished 
an adequate warranty for his reputation, which was such 
that in 1851, although only twenty-six years of age, he was 
sent by the United States government to Gibraltar to 
remove the United States sloop-of-war Missouri, which 
had burned and sunk in the bay. 

Young as he was, his selection was warranted by 
work not onl}' in this country, but at Toulon, France, 
which had given him a world-wide renown. As the 
European and Continental engineers had been unable to 
remove the wreck, the United States government was 
called upon by Great Britain to remove that obstruction 
and menace to navigation. 



LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 23 

When young Gowen called upon the Governor of 
Gibraltar to state the purpose of his visit and request ofiicial 
permission to proceed, the functionary said, "Young man, 
are you aware that the greatest engineers of Great Britain 
and the Continent have attempted this task and failed?" 
" May I inquire of Your Excellency," was his rejoinder, 
"if any of those engineers were Yankees?" And without 
any reply, the permit was made out and given to him. 
He removed the vessel by original methods whose descrip- 
tion would be more appropriate for a technical paper. 

In 1856, at the request of the Russian government, 
transmitted through its embassy at Washington, he went to 
Sebastopol and raised the Russian battleships sunk in the 
Black Sea during the Crimean War. After that time he 
made his home in Europe, the latter part of his life in 
Paris, where he held an official position for many years. 

This career undoubtedly furnished a greater number of 
priorities in American history than that of any other of our 
townspeople. Thrones lavished rewards for his remark- 
able achievements ; he was decorated by the Czar, the 
Sultan, Victor Emmanuel and Louis Napoleon, while 
Qiieen Victoria gave him the conventional snuff box 
encrusted with diamonds. 

But amid all his prosperity and the pomp of foreign 
courts he never forgot his humble Lynn cottage and 
declined to entertain any proposition for the sale of his 
boyhood's home on Center Street until informed that it 
stood in the way of progress of the great electric works, 
when he reversed his decision and declared that he would 
not obstruct anything which contributed to the prosperity 
of his native town, and consented to the disposal of the 
property. 

During one ot" his visits to Lynn, he presented to the 



24 LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 

Lynn Light Infantry a Russian twelve-pound gun, which 
was at the time the only cannon of that country in foreign 
lands, excepting in France. 

He also gave to the Park Club a large carved figure- 
head of the Imperial Russian eagle, of which one of the 
distinctive double heads has unfortunately been removed 
in a vandal attempt at naturalization, and this eagle, it is 
understood, was then absolutely unique as an instance of 
that royal emblem being in a foreign country. 

People of Lynn do not appear to have excelled in any 
form of agriculture at home. Rev. Samuel Whiting 
brought the first fruit trees to Lynn in 1636, and the onl}^ 
instances of his example being followed appear to have 
been those of Ephraim Ingalls, for many years the head 
of a large express business, who was one of the pioneers 
to California and carried the first apple trees to that country, 
and was to that extent the progenitor of the great fruit 
industry of the Pacific coast; and Charles F. Mudge, who 
moved to Kansas and carried the seeds of the dandelion to 
that territory and taught the people its use. Andrew Mack 
Haines, who moved from Lynn to Galena, Illinois, where 
he became a dry goods merchant, carried the barberries to 
that state, but was scarcely able to carry out his purpose 
of making the New England conserve yclept " shoe-pegs," 
on account of the great demand by the ladies for their use 
as floral decorations for the hair. 

The largest farm in the world, exceeding in area that 
of a county, and I believe, approaching that of the smaller 
states, is what is known as the Dalrymple Farm, being a 
tract of land obtained by foreign holders of Northern 
Paciiic securities, who converted this personal property 
into land scrip, wliich has been managed by the two 
Dalrymple brothers, formerly of Lynn. The great won- 



I.YNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 25 

der of this farm is not merely its unequalled area, but 
the great skill of its managers in applying modern methods 
of business administration to the successful operation of 
this enormous tract. 

Although without any claims to being a maritime 
town, its shipping having been coastwise, with the excep- 
tion of a hardly successful venture in whaling, many Lynn 
people have followed the sea and risen to prominent 
positions. 

Lynn furnished the greatest New England merchant 
of the early portion of the last century in William Gray, 
who spent his boyhood in his native town, but whose busi- 
ness career was established in Salem whence he removed 
to Boston, on account of a dispute with the assessors. 

Although rather short, below middle height, he was 
powerfully built and was always in dread of consumption 
but lived to the age of seventy-five. My grandtather, who 
built several of his warehouses at Salem, related that while 
the work was in progress Mr. Gray would climb over the 
building and grasping the lower edges of adjacent floor 
joists, raise himself and with bended knees swincr to and 
fro m the gymnastic feat of "ringing the church bell," a 
difficult task even when grasping Roman rings in a 
gymnasium. 

He thought that he had reached his ambition of own- 
ing over one hundred vessels, but shipwreck and the 
fortunes of war kept his fleet to below that count, and 
ninety-eight sail was probably the largest number at any 
time. 

His estate was said to have been the largest ever pro- 
bated up to that time in this country, exceeding by a slight 
amount that of George Washington, who had died twenty- 
six years earlier. 



26 LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 

As pioneer navigators we can only cite Captain 
Clement P. Jayne, master of the clipper ship Game Cock, 
which was the tirst American merchant ship to enter a 
Japanese port after the treaty of Commodore Perry ; and 
the great number of early Japanese curios which he gener- 
ously distributed among his Lynn friends are now cherished 
as prizes of high archaeological value which cannot be 
reproduced. 

Another was Edward Appleton Haven, who, as first 
officer of the Zeigler Arctic exploring expedition, pene- 
trated to the Far North, and made some discoveries of 
record. 

Lynn furnished about two hundred pioneers to Cal- 
ifornia after the discovery of gold many of whom failed 
to reach that promised Eldorado, some of them being 
unable to withstand the hardships and paying the penalties 
by their lives. 

As an example of these hardships, David S. Boynton 
was fourteen months sailincj for San Francisco around 
Cape Horn, on a voyage whose severity is indicated by its 
unusual delays. 

Henry A. Breed, whose portrait hangs in this hall, 
went to California in 1849, and accomplished wonders in 
the early development of San Francisco ; and associated 
with him was Benjamin Sprague, who still remains with 
us as the senior member of this Society, enjoying in his 
mature years the rest well-earned by a career of efficient 
business activity. 

Joseph Dixon, mentioned below, organized a company 
of twenty-one men, armed and clad in gray uniforms, to 
march overland to California. This company was dis- 
banded on arrival at St. Louis and it is not known that any 
of them ever completed the journey in tlie manner contem- 
plated at the outset. 



LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 27 

A particular romance of commerce was the transpor- 
tation of ice to the tropics, tirst to the West Indies and later 
to India, by Frederick Tudor of Nahant, who showed a 
masterly ability in overcoming obstacles from owners of 
vessels and the prejudices of the people of those warm 
countries. The tirst cargo was attacked by a negro mob 
and thrown overboard. Physicians were retained and soon 
used it in their practice. Bar keepers were subsidized by 
being paid the price of a drink for every glass of free ice- 
water taken at their bars. Buffets were established for the 
serving of iced drinks, both temperance and otherwise, with 
all the arts of the mixologist. In connection with the ice- 
houses, and to this day, throughout the West Indies, 
although refrigerating machines have taken the place of 
natural ice, yet the old name still continues and the signs 
remain in English, " Ice-House-Sippings," as a place where 
cooled drinks may be obtained. 

Some details of this remarkable adventure in mer- 
chandising, which are believed not to be in any of the 
histories, may be of interest. 

His father, William Tudor, Judge Advocate General 
of the Army of the Revolution under General Washington, 
built a residence in Saugus, on the Newburyport Turnpike, 
which was purchased b}' the town in 1815, and is now 
known as the Saugus Home. William Tudor built an 
artiticial lake on this estate which was supplied by a canal 
leading from Long Pond, over a mile distant. In the 
winter of 1805, Frederick Tudor cut 130 tons of ice from 
his father's pond and teamed it to Gray's Wharf, Charles- 
town, where it was loaded on the brig Favorite and shipped 
to St. Pierre, Martinique, since destroyed by a volcanic 
eruption. 

It required ten years to develop the West India trade, 



28 LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 

and in 1810 he began to send ice to southern seaports in 
this country. By experience in these shipments, he learned 
how to pack ice so as to endure the three months' voyage 
to India. He found that the ice from Wenham Lake 
would not melt as rapidly as that from other ponds, for 
this lake is fed by springs, and not aerated, as is the case 
of lakes fed by streams, and the ice did not contain as many 
air bubbles. 

He moved from Saugus to Nahant, where he built his 
residence in 1827, now occupied by the Nahant Club, and 
devoted many years to horticulture and tree planting. 

It is surprising to note the number of new and impor- 
tant lines of invention and construction which have origi- 
nated in this city, but there is opportunity to cite only a 
few of them. 

The three Merrill brothers of Lynn were coadjutors 
with Samuel Downer in the derivation of kerosene oil from 
the hitherto worthless Nova Scotia shale and later applying 
modified processes to the refining of petroleum, after the 
discovery in Pennsylvania that it could be obtained in large 
quantities by artesian wells. Petroleum had been known 
for many years as it issued from the earth in small quantities 
and was used only as a liniment. When kerosene was first 
produced, the expense of its preparation was so great that 
it cost seventy-five cents a gallon, and the millions who use 
this form of illumination throughout the globe should 
gratefully remember the cooperation of chemical skill and 
the merchandising system which has reduced its cost to 
about one-sixth of its former price. 

Joseph Dixon, was an inventor in many lines, chief 
among which was that of the first utilization of graphite 
deposits in this country, making in his laboratory on Wash- 
ington Street, first stove blacking, then plumbago crucibles, 



LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 29 

after that lead pencils and later the preparation of graphite 
for the lubrication of journals under great pressure. 

Among his many other inventions, he made priorities 
in cutting files by machiner}- before he was twenty-one, 
and in superheated steam a year later. 

lie took the first portrait by the camera and originated 
photo-lithography, and also the printing of bank notes in 
different colors, which was the first impediment outside of 
the law to successful counterfeiting. 

His brother Francis, who was associated with him in 
his enterprises, was better known to the people in Lynn. 

One of the most useful inventions was the application 
of the pressure-bar to wood-planing machines, whose 
use had hitherto been limited to clear pine, free from knots, 
a class of lumber which is of the past, enabling the 
application of these machines to planing and to making of 
mouldings in any kind of lumber of the most irregular 
grain. This device was made by Joseph P. Woodbury at 
the old mill on Commercial Street, and has never been 
superseded, but continues as an essential to this day. 

Not all of the inventions have been received with 
encouragement, for when rubber tires, were made and 
placed upon his beach wagon by Seth D. Woodbury, 
the inventor, the city marshal ordered them removed 
on account of the hazard of a noiseless carriage, and the 
extenuation that this improvement did not extend to the 
horses' shoes was not considered ; and this inventor, after 
taking counsel of Lawyer Rowland, was told that the 
police powers in a city were absolute, and he reluctantly 
removed the rubber tires. He died many years ago, with- 
out knowing that the Egyptian archaeologists had dis- 
covered a small chariot, made by a Pharaoh for his 
daughter, so light that it could be drawn by slaves, on 



30 LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 

which the tires of the wheels were covered by rubber, as 
may be seen by visitors to the museum at Cairo. 

Some of these inventions have been applied to purposes 
far afield from the original intentions, as, for example, that 
of Charles F. Holder, the eminent author and naturalist, 
born in Lynn, but now of California, who invented a glass 
bottomed boat for the study of the fauna and flora of the 
sea, which has become more widely known through its 
application to the entertainment of travelers at points of 
resort in tropical waters, in Florida, Bermuda and the 
Bahamas. 

This list might be continued almost indefinitely, if it 
were not for self-imposed limitations, confining this review 
to those of pioneer actions in which there may be many 
omissions. I will make only one more citation, not to add 
to information, but to state what is known throughout the 
world, and that is a reference to the versatile career of 
Professor Elihu Thomson, like Michael Angelo, prominent 
not merely in one direction, but in the many which have 
received his attention, especially in the applications of elec- 
tricity to the useful service of mankind r one of the most 
eminent scientists of the age. 

EDUCATION AND LITERATURE. 

The impossibility of applying material units to mea- 
sure mental operations furnishes an impediment to a just 
statement of our noteworthy contributors to education and 
literature. 

Shoemaking was a peculiar industry in that it brought 
small groups of men together at an occupation which did 
not make much noise and permitted conversation which 
was generally directed to a discussion of statements in the 
newspapers which v\'ere read in turn by some member of 



LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 3I 

the shop whenever it was not feasible to impress some vis- 
iting school-boy in this service. This developed a taste 
for reading and a high general intelligence among the 
people. A circulating library was established on Boston 
Street in 1794 and which through its succeeding organiza- 
tions became the progenitor of the Lynn Public Library. 

Lynn being neither a college town nor a county seat, 
lacked that attraction to scholars and jurists, but it has 
claims to furnishing a home for men eminent in letters. 
Rev. Samuel Whiting, who occupied the pulpit at Lynn 
from 1636 until 1679, was one of the most eminent schol- 
ars of his day, closely affiliated with Harvard College, and 
a preacher there, and on account of his strength of charac- 
ter and general abilities, he was one of the leading 
influences in the Colony. It is said that his clerical rela- 
tions with the Church of England were never sundered. 

The First Church is the only one of the early Puritan 
organizations which has retained both its original trinitarian 
faith and its original site, not indeed on the same founda- 
tions, for the present meeting house is the fifth structure, 
all of which have, however, been on the original glebe of 
that society. I understand that none of its early con- 
temporaries in England remain. 

Abraham Pierson of Lynn was the first President and 
one of the founders of Yale College. 

Cornelius Conway Felton, the earliest of the eminent 
Greek scholars in this country and President of Harvard 
College, was born and spent his boyhood in Saugus. 

Charles William Eliot, President of Harvard Univer- 
sit}', lived for many summers in his father's home at 
Nahant. 

Rev. William H. P. Faunce, President of Brown 
University, lived and married in this city. 



32 LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 

Colonel Carroll D.Wright, for many years a resident of 
this city where he practised patent law and was afterwards 
engaged many years at the head of statistical departments 
tirst of the Commonwealth and then of the nation, both 
of which he developed to a degree of practical usefulness 
not hitherto reached by tabulations of facts, was for the 
latter portion of his life President of Clark College.* 

In addition to these college presidents, there was 
another eminent collegian, James Edward Oliver, the noted 
mathematician of his day, whose services as such were 
retained by the federal government in addition to his occu- 
pancy of professional chairs at several colleges. 

One of the greatest contributions towards standardizing 
the correct use of our language, ranking in importance with 
the work of Noah Webster upon its spelling, was the life 
work of Goold Brown, the grammarian, whose home was 
in this city for many years. 

The public school system founded by the Colony of 
Massachusetts Bay has been a corner stone of the Com- 
monwealth, and from the tirst unto the closing years of its 
third century it has never had an abler exponent of its 
principles always reaching to improvement, but conservative 
enough to hold fast to that which is good, than George 
Henry Martin, Ex-President of this Society, who in the 
fulness of years, but in the prime of his abilities, resigned 
the Secretaryship of the State Board of Education, and 
later became a member of the Lynn School Committee, 
like the " Old Man Eloquent " of Quincy w^ho thought it not 
incompatible with the dignity of an Ex-President of the 
United States to serve later in the lower house of Concjress. 

The Friends" Society established their school in I'J'J'j, 
and ten years later a portion of the public taxes were con- 

*A fortnight after the dclivcrj- ol this paper Dr. Ilollis Godtrey wa-s elected President 
of the Drexel Institute. 



LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 33 

tribuled to its support and this continued for forty years, 
giving to Lynn the llrst and only parochial school in the 
Commonwealth : and this peaceful sect was strong enough 
politically to prevent the Methodist Church, which also had 
a private school of its own, from receiving any help from 
municipal taxes, when a town meeting passed a vote con- 
taining the surprising admission that "The Methodis do 
not have their share of the public money." 

At the time when the English High School was estab- 
lished, and instruction in stenography and typewriting was 
introduced at the instance of Joseph G. Pinkham, M. D., 
chairman of the school committee, the belief that this was 
the first instance of the adoption of these important courses 
in public schools was correct as far as the typewriter was 
concerned, but it was afterwards learned that instruction in 
stenography had been introduced into the Waltham High 
School many years before by Dr. Thomas Hill, chairman 
of the school committee and President of Harvard Univer- 
sity. This was in advance of due time because at that 
period the services of stenographers were limited almost 
entirely to legislative assemblies and to the higher courts. 

The summer colony, which occupied the ocean front 
of Lynn for man}^ years included many of the leading 
authors of this country, and need not be cited in this con- 
nection, as their affiliations were not with this city; but it 
is no disparagement to the man}^ excellent productions of 
authors for whom Lynn has furnished a birth-place, home, 
and perhaps a grave, to claim that The Jewels of the 
Third Plantation, by James R. Newhall has been the only 
distinctively literary production of that class entitling it to 
be called a work of genius. I am fully aware that there 
may be those who differ, but I believe that such opinions 
generally owe their origin to causes which are distinctively 



34 LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 

personal in their nature, and the only answer which can 
be made is to declare that this is considered to be the only 
Lynn book which, notwithstanding the small editions, 
made itself known to historians throughout the country. 

The first book written in the Massachusetts Bay 
Colony was New England's Prospect, by William Wood, 
one of the five Lynn pioneer settlers, which also 
included his map of 1633 which was the first map of New 
England by a colonist. The earlier maps of Champlain, 
Captain John Smith, Sir William Alexander, and others, 
were virtually limited to the shore lines. 

The city is greatly indebted to Alonzo Lewis, its 
historian, who lived early enough to rescue from oblivion 
a great deal of traditional information related by his 
mother, Mary Hudson Lewis ; and amid conditions of 
poverty, without the preliminary training which is now 
expected of an historian, and at a time when the state 
records were not arranged or indexed in any manner, he 
wrote his history of Lynn, to which James R. Newhall 
later added a great number of annals. 

Two Lynn women have reached eminence, both of them 
having lived in the immediate vicinity of this Society House. 
Miss Maria Mitchell believed to have been the first woman 
astronomer of any recognized importance, whose observa- 
tory still remains in the yard adjoining that of this society, 
was a great teacher capable of imparting her enthusiasm 
to her pupils, and it is related that a student in one of her 
classes at Vassar College was narrating a lot of astro- 
nomical lore one eveningr to a friend whose tastes and 
experiences were more mundane and he replied, "I clearly 
see how you found out the distance of the stars from the 
earth and their size and the speed and direction of their 
courses: but how did you ever find out their names?" 



I.VNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 



35 



Although womankind is naturally the more devout of 
the sexes, yet it is as a worshipper and not as a propagan- 
dist ; and it is believed that the only system of religion ever 
founded by a woman was originated in Lynn on Broad 
Street diagonally opposite the Society House, by Mrs. Mary 
Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, which dates 
from February, 1866, and whose branches have permeated 
throughout the civilized world. The various societies of 
this creed at the last report reached the number of 1,424, 
but I understand that there is no close estimate of the num- 
ber of the adherents of this cult, whose millions throufrh the 
weight of numbers are an ethical force which must be 
considered. 

In summing up the various activities originated in 
Lynn there were two which have been a leaven whose 
influences have been strongly felt so far and so wide that 
their limitations cannot be measured or perhaps even 
estimated. I refer first to the separation of town and par- 
ish on March 5, 1722, which appears to have been the 
first record in all history of the separation of church and 
state, not as the result of struggle or controversy, but in 
the deliberate opinion that such a course would be for the 
good of both. This concurrent enactment on the part of 
the town and the parish was carried out in the most 
amicable spirit and the iown meetings were held in the 
Old Tunnel meeting house for eighty years after that sep- 
aration. 

This action of a little New England town, far 
reaching in the establishment of civic liberty and religious 
freedom, has been presented in such a masterly manner 
by Judge Nathan Mortimer Hawkes at the two hundred 
and seventy-fifth anniversary of the First Church as to 
receive the commendation of President Taft in an auto- 
graph letter written while summering at Beverly. 



36 LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 

The second great event was of recent years in the 
enactment of the secret ballot law which was introduced 
March 2, 1888, by Elihu Burritt Hayes of Lynn, a mem- 
ber of the State legislature. This law stopped any domi- 
nating power outside of general public sentiment controlling 
the ballot at the polls as is shown by the diminution of 
majorides, whatever party maybe locally in the ascendant. 

These few citations of the initiatives of the relatively 
few men of achievement who are leaders in every com- 
munity, endowed with wisdom to plan and vigor to execute, 
are sufficient to show that Lynn has a history forming a 
guidance for to-day, investing its people with a local pride 
like unto that of the apostle of old, a citizen of no mean 
city. 

Men of Lynn were authoritatively in the councils of 
the Colony leading to the establishment of the Common- 
wealth, and inaugurated many of the fundamental measures 
of legislation. 

The extent to which the members of this little band, 
hemmed between the savages and the deep sea, developed 
their own self-reliance is shown by the manner in which 
within a few years they applied the principles of law, 
developed under generations of monarchies to the solution 
of problems of local self-government, and beyond that they 
initiated new functions of sovereignty, notably the written 
ballot, trade schools, industrial statistics, free public 
education, the town government, the separation of ciuirch 
and state, citizen militia, printed paper money and the 
record of deeds and mortgages. Well did Carlyle char- 
acterize the people who showed such an initiative as "the 
last of the heroisms." 

There were giants in those days. 

Some of these references may have appeared trite, 



LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 37 

Others not so broadly known and many important features 
have been omitted because not the earliest in their character- 
ization, but the whole indicates the opportunities for further 
monographs upon elements of Lynn history in continuation 
of the collections amassed by this Society during the past 
sixteen years, and it also shows the reason for this Society 
as an organization of to-day, applying such of the past as 
may be useful to the present and an indication for the 
future, and above all a civic centre. 

One lesson of a review of the past clearly shows that 
the ethical standards of life have become higher, inevitable 
legitimate differences of opinion are not to such a great 
extent accompanied by personal violence, there is a deeper 
respect for law and order, and above all that ineffable 
summation of moral principles termed "business honor" 
prevails as never before. 



